Northshore Home magazine highlights the best in architectural design, new construction and renovations, interiors, and landscape design.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/579535
96 touching almost the entire house—several generations had left their thumbprint, and it was time to restore the house to its former glory." To add a new HVAC unit and insulate the house to 21st-century standards, the plaster walls in many areas were taken down to the stone, followed by reconstruc- tion of the walls and application of closed-cell spray foam. Making the house even more energy efficient was the replacement of older windows with 30 Marvin Ulti- mate windows. "Insulation and new windows not only created warmer spaces but also a quieter envelope—the house was once drafty even with walls 22 to 26 inches thick," notes Day. "We also replaced all the hardwood floors on the first floor with five-inch quarter-sawn white oak." That step—along with Knowles's replace- ment of interior doors with simple English Arts and Crafts-style models—gave the spaces a cohesive feel. Although many of the original architectural firm's records were lost in a fire decades ago, some images existed of the original rooms, which were helpful in the restoration process. For instance, shelving was brought back into a reading nook off the great room, and second- floor bedrooms were refreshed with new paint and refinished flooring. The great hall went through a meticulous restora- tion. "We did not want to disrupt this room, as its support timbers and walls were original," Knowles says. "They just needed to be cleaned and refinished to coax out their patina." The fireplace, undersized for the space, was the only design flaw in the great hall. The homeowner turned to one of her favorite his- torical houses, Frank Lloyd Wright's Heurtley House in Oak Park, a town that she had lived in for many years. The Heurtley House fireplace has a semicircular open- Left, Dining room paneling was created for the space in the Arts and Crafts tradition. The kitchen was completely renovated— complete with La Cornue stove.